


Latching Onto You

by writergirl8



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 11:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13762884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirl8/pseuds/writergirl8
Summary: His fingers brush hers, and it’s a mistake, this is amistake, the only problem is that she doesn’t quite know which part. Next to him, Isaac gets jostled by Derek and shoves into him, and then Stiles’ arm is pressed up against Lydia’s and it’s too much touching, too many memories, too much reality. She knows what growing up with him looks like, and she knows what growing up without him looks like. Even though it stings, she knows indisputably that growing old is infinitely more precious when Stiles teasingly plucks her glasses off of her face so that he can kiss the smile wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.But, no. She hadn’t had glasses when they were together.That’s not a memory. That’s wishful thinking.





	Latching Onto You

**Author's Note:**

> I have a con law exam tomorrow and I just knew I wouldn't be able to sleep, so I lit a candle, got in bed, and forced myself to lose myself in this. It was supposed to be a 30 Minute Fic, but I kept... hitting the reset button so I could keep writing. However, I have to go to bed, so this is un beta'd. All mistakes are my own glaring stupidity. 
> 
> Inspired by the line "We sit in bars and raise our drinks to growing old/oh I'm in love with you and you will never know/but if I can't have you/I want this life alone" from Leave Your Lover by Sam Smith. The title is also from Latch by Sam Smith. 
> 
> And now, with a happy heart and clear head... I will continue to study for my exam. 
> 
> PS: Shout out @ Griswold v. Connecticut for establishing a constitutional right to sexual privacy for marital couples' intimate decisions regarding birth control, setting a precedent for Eisenstadt v. Baird to establish the same rights for unmarried couples almost a decade later. The very protected sex that Stiles and Lydia will be having following end of this fic is all thanks to you guys. Y'all are the real MVP.

The light of the fire casts a sharp shadow across Stiles’ cheekbones, making them look hollow and drawn. In the dim lighting of the tavern, she can’t help sneaking glances over at them, feeling attracted to them in the dread that she feels. They’re too clean, almost empty in their perfection. He’s so beautiful and she can’t touch him because his cheeks are on fire and his touch spreads it all the way up her skin and she’s _scared_. 

Lydia’s never been daunted by much on Stiles’ face— not his cheeks, certainly, which flushed red the first time she kissed them. Not his lips either, which are innocent in a way that he never would be, regardless of what they have said and done. She hadn’t been daunted by the upturn of his nose, either, the way it would nudge against her cheek when they accidentally found each other in the middle of the bed during the night. And _certainly_ not by the moles, the reminders of all the places she wants to map out with her mouth. 

Most of his face is a home to her, an armchair which cradles her perfectly, with the utmost of care and comfort. But not his eyes. His eyes have always been the most terrifying thing about him, Lydia thinks. At first it had been what he noticed of her; nobody looked at her with eyes as attentive as Stiles had always let his be to her. It’s different now. Now, her reticence about his eyes comes from how jittery she gets when they look into hers. By just how _long_ she wants to look back. 

She’d like to be stuck with him, Stiles Stilinski. She’d like to be stuck with him and with no one else, until time becomes meaningless, only marked by the leaves turning on the trees. She’d like for nothing else to matter but his eyes on hers, her thumbs stroking his moles, his nose nudging against hers, his lips pressed anywhere he wants them to be. 

It’s inescapable, the way she doesn’t want an escape from him. And perhaps that’s because right now that’s all they have. They have an escape. They have distance. They have endless time in all the ways that hurt most. 

Her days run slow like molasses, like the color of Stiles’ eyes, like the thickness in her throat as she’d watched him walk away from her. 

Missing him is nothing new. The new part is the complete absence of relief. 

The only reason Lydia had come here is because of Scott, which she thinks he knows from the way he throws her a grateful smile as he raises a glass up in the air. It’s one of those large beer steins, filled to the brim with ale and foam, and some of it sloshes onto the table as he thrusts it into the air, but Scott doesn’t seem to mind at all. He’s always got a low hum of contentment to him when they’re all together, as though there’s nothing in the world that’s better than a group of people who don’t fit together at all crowding around a table and jamming their mismatched pieces into each other. 

“To growing old,” Scott calls over the din of sound in the tavern. His pack echoes it back to him, voices a familiar harmony of relief and regret. 

When she takes a sip of her drink, it tastes like the melancholy that will inevitably be attached to moments like these. There isn’t enough room at the table for anyone else anyways. Maybe there never was. Maybe there was nothing they could do. 

“You okay?”

Stiles’ voice is low in her ear as he hunches over, tucking himself into her with the familiarity of someone who used to flutter his eyelashes against the nape of her neck when he was having a nightmare. He always held onto her tighter on his bad nights. She always pushed him away. 

Perhaps it was habitual that the rest of the pack members left a seat next to Lydia so that Stiles could sit there. Perhaps they’d _forgotten_ that he doesn’t belong there. Or perhaps the nature of such things, of groups gathering with people who matter too much, had just set them next to each other like it always seems to. 

Sitting here, next to him, is too hard. It’s been three long years of being stock-still, as though moving would disrupt whatever delicate balance she has that keeps her heart from tumbling. She hates how hollow his cheeks are. She hates that they could cut her too sharply. She hates how much it hurts. 

“I’m fine,” she replies thickly, the chatter in the background masking her lie. “Would you pass the menu?”

His fingers brush hers, and it’s a mistake, this is a _mistake_ , the only problem is that she doesn’t quite know which part. Next to him, Isaac gets jostled by Derek and shoves into him, and then Stiles’ arm is pressed up against Lydia’s and it’s too much touching, too many memories, too much reality. She knows what growing up with him looks like, and she knows what growing up without him looks like. Even though it stings, she knows indisputably that growing old is infinitely more precious when Stiles teasingly plucks her glasses off of her face so that he can kiss the smile wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. 

But, no. She hadn’t had glasses when they were together. 

That’s not a memory. That’s wishful thinking. 

Abruptly, Lydia shoves her chair back and stands up. Scott throws her a questioning look which Lydia responds to the best way she knows how— by ignoring it. Grabbing her jacket, hat, and scarf, she squirms her way through the tightly-packed tavern, feeling very much like a small fish in a big pond. She hadn’t quite been aware of her insigificance in the world until she stopped seeing herself through Stiles’ eyes. 

Outside, Lydia presses her back against the cold brick wall outside the pub and turns her face upwards, where a light, rare snow is fluttering down from the sky. It’s inky black, midnight blue, she would suggest, but it isn’t midnight and the blue is a trick, she thinks, that comes from the light of the moon. Without the light of the moon, the sky is just black and dark and empty. Without the moon, the stars aren’t nearly as brilliant. 

Lydia reaches into her purse, rummaging through with slightly shaking hands until she finally comes up with the old pack of cigarettes that she had bought a few years ago. It’s well-worn, the cheap outside falling apart. Most of the cigarettes are still in there, and Lydia only feels a slight amount of guilt when she plucks one out. She’s nervous. She needs to do something with her hands. 

“‘I’m fine,’” a voice mimics, wry with humor. “‘I’m fine,’ she says, before going outside to shame-smoke in the back alley behind a bar.”

“I’m not _shame_ smoking.” Lydia turns to Stiles with a proud expression on her face, feeling more indignant than she should considering the fact that she’s got an unlit cigarette between her fingers, ready to go. “I’m just enjoying the evening.” 

“You hate the cold,” points out Stiles, as though she doesn’t know this of herself. Lydia shrugs a shoulder, cringing as the tightly knit weave of the hat that Kira had made for her catches on the brick. Her hair is going to be a mess when she takes the hat off to go back inside, but she likes wearing it when she sees Kira. Likes the bright, elated smile when Lydia’s lightly curled hair is tumbling out from under the hat. “Lydia.” He sounds serious. She turns to him, keeping her gaze detached. “Lydia, what’s wrong?”

It would be easy, she thinks, to put the blame on him. To make him feel the way she does, raw and scraped bare and so, so small. It would be easy to tear him up once she makes his skin thin with her words, to punish him for how much she wants him, to make him hate himself as much as she hates him for how much she misses him. Knowing him so much, knowing him so _deeply_ , means that she has every power in the world to hurt him the way he’s hurting her. 

She doesn’t do that. Instead, she keeps her lips shut and fixes her eyes on her boots. Coach. Thick, chunky heels. Side zip. A nice red suede that doesn’t go with the hat and scarf that she’s wearing, but she doesn’t mind. 

Stiles lets out a sigh, long and low, as he pushes up from the wall. 

“Fine, then,” he says. Then he yanks the cigarette from where it dangles on her finger tip and throws it on the ground before she even has a chance to light it. It’s calculated, the disappointment in his voice. He’s not surprised. Just annoyed. She remembers what it used to sound like when there was fondness there too, but that’s long gone, replaced by something much more tired but equally as steady. 

“It’s just…” She trails off, swallowing hard. “I thought I was over you, but I’m _not,_ and I hate it.” 

The words explode from her mouth before she can stop them, effectively entrapping Stiles’ retreating form. Lydia knows what it looks like when he walks away and she doesn’t call him back. She can’t watch it again. She can’t spend another three years wondering how the colors of the leaves would look if she had said it. 

“You thought… you were over me,” he repeats back, as though wanting to make sure he’s got all the facts. She imagines him stringing her words across the mystery board and calling past Lydia— teenage Lydia, the Lydia who had only pressed her lips to his once, the Lydia who stared at him even though he wasn’t looking anymore— to help him decipher the meaning. “But you’re not.” 

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

It snaps out before she can stop it, vitriolic. She wants a cigarette for real this time. She wants an excuse for her trembling hands and broken voice. 

“You thought you got over me.” 

“That might be an exaggeration.” 

His back is still to her, but he turns his face to the side when she concedes that, lip turning up at the corner. She can see her favorite mole. She can see everything she’s missing, even when his back it to her. 

“It’s been three years.”

He says it like she doesn’t have the math worked out in her head of how many kisses they’d missed, how many movies, how many morning greetings that would have ended in him fucking her, his body curled protectively against hers 

“I…” She’s helpless, eyes on the tenseness of his back. “I can’t help it.” 

“Oh.”

Stiles doesn’t say anything else. She wants to blurt out the numbers to him, wants to tell him her calculations, wants to tell him that no matter how high the count gets she will _never_ stop wanting him. Instead, she speaks just like he does: voice small, words hopeful, heart violent in what could be either its first or last beats. 

“Stiles,” she says, strained. “Please let me love you again. _Please_.” He draws in a deep, shuddering breath. “It’s not good enough without you. Nothing’s enough. I thought it could be, but… it’s not _worth_ it. I want to keep watching you get older, Stiles. I don’t want to wait and wait and wait and _miss it_.” He’s silent for a long time, so long that she has to stop holding her breath. Eventually she can’t take it, her eyes stinging with tears from cold and hurt. “Please say someth—” 

His hands are cupping her cheeks, warm and gentle as he kisses her with an urgency that makes her knees week. She feels the kiss swoop all the way through her, from her heart to the very bottom of her stomach, then back again. It swerves in larger and larger circles until she is warm all the way down to her toes and her brain is buzzing and still Stiles slides his tongue up hers too, too, too slow, none of his touch matching the frenzy of what this is. 

He pulls back, hands still on her cheeks as he stares down at her in wonderment, eyes wide and bright with tears. 

Lydia is the first to speak. 

“You okay?”

When he laughs, it unravels his whole body, shaking him out. He sags against her, forehead pressing against hers, eyes squeezing shut. 

“I was really scared.” 

Lydia brings her hand up to one of the ones on her cheek and covers it, squeezing his fingers into her own small fist. 

“Me too.” 

“I mean, I’ve been _so_ —” 

“I know. Me too.” 

He breathes out, shaky, and she _loves him_ , she loves her this grown-up man who used to be the boy who knew her in a way that she considered both too well and not well enough. She’d been right about that, back then. But she’s right now too. It’s one of the things that’s never changed. 

“You really wanna be stuck with me, Lydia Martin?”

She steps away. Rises on her tip-toes. Traps his cheekbones between her palms now, forcing him to see her. She looks into his eyes, letting him look into hers too, letting him read her and see her the way that has always belonged to him. She used to avoid his gaze. At one point he would drop eye-contact first. Eventually both of them stared too much. And now finally, finally, finally. They are going to get it right. 

This time, neither of them look away. 


End file.
